Trivia / Till Death Us Do Part

• Channel Hop: From The BBC to ITV, and then back again; the original series, which ran (on and off) from 1965 to 1975, was on the former, but in 1981 the latter continued the sitcom for six episodes in a series entitled Till Death..., in which Alf and Elsie had moved to Eastbourne. Then it returned to the Beeb for the sequel, In Sickness and in Health, which saw the Garnetts return to London; it ran from 1985 to 1992.
• The Character Died with Him: Dandy Nichols, who played Else, died in early 1986, not long after the first series of the sequel In Sickness and in Health was broadcast. Subsequent episodes showed Alf having to deal with old age as a widower.
• The Danza: Felix from "Christmas Club Books" and "The Window" was played by Felix Bowness.
• Executive Meddling: Head of Comedy Michael Mills clashed with Johnny Speight a few times in Series 3:
  • He wasn't happy with "Monopoly", ordering the script to be cut down and have less swearing, and choosing to have "The Phone" aired as the Series 3 opener instead.
  • He also didn't approve of the blasphemy in "Aunt Maud", notably ordering the removal of a scene where Mike pretends to trap God in a glass and lines comparing God to Adolf Hitler.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Warren Mitchell and Anthony Booth hated each other just as their characters did.
  • Writer Johnny Speight fell out with The BBC during Series 3; Speight was furious that his scripts were being censored and aired Out of Order, whereas the Beeb were fed up with receiving late scripts.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Alf, a right-wing anti-Semite, was played by Warren Mitchell, who had left-wing views and was Jewish.^note The story goes that Speight was uncomfortable writing Alf as an anti-Semite out of respect for Mitchell's ethnicity until Mitchell himself pointed out to him that on top of everything else, Alf would surely be anti-Semitic as well. This gets even more interesting when you take football allegiances into account, for the West Ham United-supporting Alf was often disdainful of Tottenham Hotspur, on account of their supposed reputation as a 'Jewish' team ... and Mitchell was a Spurs fan.
• Missing Episode: Some of the show's 26 episodes from series 1–3 that were videotaped in black and white and broadcast between 1965 and 1968 no longer exist; they, along with episodes from quite a few other shows of the time, were wiped by the BBC during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Currently, thirteen B&W episodes have been found to survive more or less in their entirety (with one episode on the original tape and the rest on film or domestic formats), while sequences exist from a further four.
• The Other Darrin: Bert was played by Bill Maynard in his first two appearances and Alfie Bass in his further twelve.
• Out of Order: "Monopoly" was supposed to be the first episode of Series 3 and would tie in with the new year but wasn't considered to be strong enough to open the new series and had "The Phone" aired in its place.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Warren Mitchell was actually the third choice to play Alf. Producer Dennis Main Wilson wanted Peter Sellers initially, but writer Johnny Speight knew that Sellers would inevitably get much better-paying film offers and would leave the series. Leo McKern was the second choice but was away sailing on the recording dates.
  • Head of Light Entertainment Tom Sloan initially refused to have the series broadcast on BBC1, only changing his mind when he heard that BBC2 were interested in it.
  • In the original Comedy Playhouse pilot, Alf's surname was Ramsey. This was changed to avoid confusion with the then manager of the England football team.
  • Johnny Speight had been contracted to write eight episodes for Series 3, but only delivered seven.
  • The original final episode of Series 3 involved Else meeting an old lover who was the exact opposite of Alf. This had to be changed when Dandy Nichols fell ill with bronchitis and had to be used sparingly, leading to the creation of the episode "Aunt Maud".

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